Non-identified patient-level data has been critical in developing an understanding of the ways drug abusers interact with the medical system, particularly in understanding patient shopping behavior. For opioids and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) stimulants – both subject to abuse – patients are known to obtain prescriptions from multiple prescribers (“doctor shopping”).

Non identified patient-level data can reveal patterns of health behaviors among patients and physicians. Behaviors such as physician prescribing patterns, the doctor or hospital visits made by patients, or use of preventative care and medicines are all visible in such data for analysis. This ability to see patient behavior has been put to good use to combat the drug abuse epidemic by identifying and modeling patterns of prescription filling known as “shopping behavior,” employed by abusers to gain access to prescription drugs inappropriately.

While drug abuse is often associated with illicit substances, the non-medical use of prescription drugs such as painkillers, tranquilizers and stimulants is widespread. Over 52 million people in the United States are estimated to have used prescription drugs non-medically in their lifetime resulting in as many as 1.4 million emergency department visits per year.46,47 The number of prescription medicine abusers over age 12 in 2013 was 6.5 million, with as many as 4.5 million people abusing painkillers, such as oxycodone and hydrocodone, alone.

Manufacturers have worked to combat this issue through the recent launch of several abuse-deterrent formulations of painkillers, but despite these efforts, this and other classes of drugs remain highly addictive and prone to abuse.49 It remains critical to understand patterns of misuse of prescription drugs, gauge which agents pose a greater risk of abuse, and assess the impact of efforts by various stakeholders – including the Drug Enforcement Administration, pharmacy chains, wholesalers and manufacturers – to combat this major public health issue.

Non-identified patient-level data has been critical in developing an understanding of the ways drug abusers interact with the medical system, particularly in understanding patient shopping behavior. For opioids and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) stimulants – both subject to abuse – patients are known to obtain prescriptions from multiple prescribers (“doctor shopping”).

Good behavioral models of this phenomenon – intended to define shopping behavior while avoiding the inappropriate flagging of individuals with legitimate use – have been created using non-identified patient data by comparing patient use of drugs prone to abuse with patterns of drugs not typically abused. For instance, one study compared patient use of ADHD drugs to that of asthma drugs, and an earlier study for opioids similarly compared the use of opioids to diuretics (non-abused) using longitudinal patient data.

In both studies, researchers found that being a patient with overlapping prescriptions written by two or more prescribers and filled at three or more pharmacies was the best predictor of abuse. In the ADHD study this pattern was 400% more frequent among those shopping for ADHD drugs than those prescribed asthma medications. Applying this definition, this study was also able to show that shopping was most common in younger subjects aged 10–39 years, and that a small number of abusers accounted for most shopping behavior. Among patients who shopped, 9.2 % of them shopped six or more times and accounted for 42.0 % of all shopping.

Connected healthcare also fundamentally needs a connected understanding of the patient. To ensure that the entire healthcare system delivers integrated care for the benefit of an individual and larger populations, action based on shared information that tells a complete and accurate story, is needed. Only with a shared understanding of patient experience and what benefits patients across the medical system can healthcare stakeholders deliver connected healthcare.

“To accomplish the goal of optimizing the system and care, nationally merged datasets are strongly needed, since if you are only seeing only one part of a patient’s experience (some part of time) then you cannot optimize.” David M. Cutler, Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics, Harvard University

Why It’s HOT: Patients are turning to social media as an integral forum to find and share information relevant to their health. The use case above for non-identified patient data shows additional value in active social listening at a brand and category level; said best by Murray Aiken “This trend only heightens the need for relevant, accurate content that can be accessed and used throughout the patient journey. Healthcare professionals, regulators and pharmaceutical manufacturers all need to overcome their reticence and acknowledge the vital role that they can and should play as participants in the healthcare conversation.”

Every month, over 500 million people visit Twitter to see what’s happening around the world. From conversations around live events to breaking news to pandas playing in the snow, and they want to make great content accessible for everyone — even if a user is not signed in. Twitter announced improvements to twitter.com that will bring those great Tweets to even more people across the globe.

Twitter rolled out a home timeline to people across 23 countries* who visit the twitter.com homepage on their mobile devices. Before, a user could see individual Tweets but it was hard to discover stories and conversations happening on Twitter without signing in. Now, you can check out a news story as it unfolds, dive into the play-by-play discussions around a game, and then come back again to see that exchange between two rappers everyone’s been talking about. It’s real-time and straight from the source, just like the Twitter experience for those who log in.

Twitter has also expanding their refreshed twitter.com homepage on web, which is already available in the US and Japan, to every country noted below. Now, anyone can explore and discover different topics and stories as they occur, including some that are tailored just for you based on your location and activity on Twitter.

Why It’s HOT: Twitter has grown beyond driving users to sign up for an account and has expanded their relevance to all mobile and desktop web users as a credible news source. For marketers, it will mean understanding the parameters for content to be chosen by Twitter to feature on the homepage blog. Currently, Twitter has only also gone the extra mile of personalization, including the ability for users to discover content organically as well as content tailored to their location or activity on Twitter. This will dramatically impact the way in which content “lives” on the platform. Content Discoverability will exponentially extend the life cycle of a tweet. Marketers will need to adjust their content strategy to consider it’s long term relevance when appropriate.

U by Kotex has made talking about feminine products much less faux-pas. In doing so they have taken to social with creative ways to “show off” your choice of feminine products rather than hiding them. Their latest campaign “Save the Undies” is garnering a ton of social engagement and is resonating with the millennial demographic.

Why It’s HOT: Women have hidden their “products” for so long and now a company has changed the way we think of “personal products”, by not only showing a product in unexpected ways but they have also integrated themselves culturally into the socialphere.

Instagram Spotlights is shining bright this week officially making their curated user-generated video that comes together to form one long piece of content a permanent feature on the platform. Much like Snapchat Stories, Instagram Spotlights’ content is being created on just about every topic including everything from cats to fitness.

Instagram’s goal and hope is that Spotlights will not only keep people engaged and coming back for more but that is will also be used as a new tool for users to discover new content. Much like Crimson Hexagon’s newer offering “Segments”, users will be able to discover content, brands and/or influencers in turn uniting platform users with content that previous may have gone unseen. According to Gabe Madway, Instagram’s communication manager:

“Spotlight is where you go to discover things you don’t follow but might end up following. Things you never expected to see.”

Most important for digital marketers to know is how Instagram selects the content the platform is going to curate within Spotlights. Hashtags are the foundation of curating Spotlight features so when creating content hashtags may play a more important role if your brand is looking to be “discovered” in Spotlights.

Why it’s Hot: The social playground is free for all to play. Even if Instagram Spotlights may be stepping on Snapchat Stories’ toes or taking a page from Twitter Moments’ playbook, all is fair in fan love and social engagement. It doesn’t matter who was in the sandbox first; all that matters is the one that builds the best castle.

AMPY MOVE™ is a portable smartphone battery charger that charges itself as you move (from kinetic energy) encouraging a fit lifestyle through a “smarter way to stay charged.”

The founders of AMPY MOVEportable battery charger and AMPY+ mobileappexplored the possibilities of capturing their own energy from daily activities to charge their smartphones, then engineered a solution to do just that and so the AMPY MOVE was born; a motion-charger, a portable smartphone battery that charges from kinetic energy.

AMPY MOVE, “The World’s First Wearable Motion-Charger,” also has a free app available, AMPY+, “A Smarter Way to Live Charged.”

The AMPY+ smartphone app helps you stay charged and stay fit. Review your personal Battery Life Forecast with predictions and insights, track the calories you burn and power you generate, and compete with your friends.

It’s free, and you don’t need an AMPY MOVE to use it. Sending a shout out to the founders of this cool new kinetic energy capturing wearable. Your team nailed the seeding for the December Release of AMPY MOVE with the free AMPY+ app.

Why It’s HOT: Preventive health and wellness are at the forefront of our lives; driving insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and employers to encourage taking ownership of your health and long term wellness. Enabling a healthy and fit lifestyle through a wearable like AMPY MOVE provides great utility and it could influence positive lifestyle changes in those that use it. It’s green energy, it’s good for your health and it makes you sound really smart when you say “I utilize my kinetic energy to charge my smartphone while getting fit for bathing suit season. What do you do?”

Want to contact someone, but don’t have their number? No problem, if you know what their name is. Provided they are a Facebook user, you will be able to get in contact with them through Messenger! In other words, Facebook is your new phone number.

Up until now, anyone who’s not your friend, a friend of a friend (depending on your privacy settings), or someone who does’t actually have your phone number, could not just message you on Facebook. Their message would simply go to Messenger’s spam inbox – Other. A message from someone like this will still not make it into your inbox, but will show up as a ‘Message Request’ that you can either reply to or choose to ignore. The “other” mailbox will be phased out.

David Marcus, Vice President of Messaging Products at Facebook, explained

“We truly want to make Messenger the place where you can find and privately connect with anyone you need to reach, but only be reached by the people you want to communicate with. Now, the only thing you need to talk to virtually anyone in the world, is their name.”

So now, you can easily talk to someone you’ve just met – but aren’t Facebook friends with just yet – without having to go through the first step. Not that it’s a complicated step, but it does make communication a bit easier with people that you either don’t want to “be friends” with on Facebook or in real life. Many people do want to keep Facebook separate from their daily communications, and although we are given the opportunity to filter who sees what, Message Requests will really help users do this effectively.

Why It’s Hot: Facebook is increasing the convenience factor associated with the platform, that is keeping in mind the Facebook Messenger is its own platform. In addition to daily life convenience like phone calls, Facebook is making a push to be the leading dual-screen engagement platform. Facebook is existing within a “Can’t stop, Won’t stop” mentality; always pushing for more.

From live streaming fashion shows to previews on Instagram, fashion brands have been slowly opening their exclusive doors to consumers on social media. Now, Burberry is giving fans behind-the-scenes access to it’s spring 2016 campaign photoshoot via Snapchat — a first for the fashion industry.

Following the high-end brand on Snapchat means you’ll be able to watch their Spring 2016 campaign shoot with Mario Testino live and in real time.

This is not Burberry’s first experiment with the photo sharing app. A day prior to the brand’s London Fashion Week show, Burberry previewed the collection for it’s Snapchat followers and dedicated a live story to the event.

The full print campaign will be revealed in January 2016.

Why It’s HOT: The shift from “traditional” advertising to social media to offer fans more immediate access is amazing. Even more amazing is, this shift is being captured as one of the most creative shifts to take place in marketing when looking to leverage digital platforms across social media to elevate your brand.

The FDA’s acceptance of the first digital medicine-New Drug Application took place this week.. It will pair Proteus Digital Health’s ingestible sensor platform with Otsuka Pharmaceuticals’ FDA-approved Abilify drug to treat people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and in some cases for major depressive disorder to monitor adherence.

The Abilify tablet contains an ingestible sensor that communicates with a wearable sensor patch and medical software application. The idea is to measure adherence.

Otsuka CEO for development and commercialization Dr. William Carson said in a statement that patients suffering from severe mental illnesses struggle with adhering to or communicating with their healthcare teams about their medication regimen, which can greatly impact outcomes and disease progression.

The Proteus digital health feedback system combines an ingestible sensor placed on a pill, with a wearable sensor on an adhesive patch, and a mobile application that displays data on a mobile device, such as a smartphone.

The technology behind the embedded sensor is pretty cool. Stomach juices activate an energy source — similar to a potato starch battery. The embedded sensor sends signals to a skin patch electrode, which wirelessly transmits information such as vital signs, body position and verification of medication ingestion.

The sensor would be embedded during the drug manufacturing process as a combination drug-device, communicating with the Proteus patch and relevant medical software. If approved, the combination drug-device could be used to tailor medicines more closely to reflect each of our medication-taking patterns and lifestyle choices, Andrew Thompson, Proteus Digital Health CEO said in a statement.

Why It’s HOT: Abilify recently went off patent; therefore, generic versions of the medication are now available. To combat the loss associated with LOE, Otsuka partnered with a digital innovation company to be a first mover of a new offering to their pre-existing market; although, with a new intriguing competitive edge and MOA associated with the digestible sensor. There is no chemical reformulation of the drug; it simply now has innovative utility that is sure to drive HCP script writing in light of the generic form of Abilify being available without the digestible sensor because it has the potential improve patient outcomes which is the desired end goal for all suffering from mental illness.

When coping with his own anxiety, UK-based illustrator, Toby Allen, found that drawing his worries and fears as little monsters would help him think about them differently and make his anxiety feel more manageable. Allen imagined that his anxiety could be overcome by giving it a physical from, giving it a visible weakness that he could learn to exploit.

From his creatively ideated coping mechanism, Real Monsters was born, creating a series of drawings that aim to raise mental health awareness – by depicting different disorders and conditions as monsters.

Allen’sReal Monstersseries is a collection of 16 illustrations (with another eight in the pipeline) that tackle everything from depression and anxiety to schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder.

After receiving a positive response on his Tumblr-shared illustrations, Allen decided to tackle a variety of other conditions as part of a larger project. “I also wanted to try and educate people about mental illness and maybe even reduce the stigma surrounding it, through helping viewers to understand what it’s like to have one of these conditions,” he explained.

“I begin each monster design by researching the condition or disorder extensively, often relying on real life case studies or first person stories to get a better understanding of the illness I intend to draw,” continued Allen. “Of course each person’s experience with a mental illness will differ, so I try to create something that many people will find familiar.”

Allen said he regularly receives emails from people who thank him for creating the work.

“I have received so many wonderful messages from people who live with one or many of the disorders I have drawn, each telling me how much the work means to them and how it has helped them to think about their condition in a different or more positive way,” he said. “Of course, due to the sensitive subject matter, I have also received some negative feedback but that’s to be expected and I respect people’s opinions on the work.”

Why It’s HOT: The destigmatization of mental illness has reached a much deserved tipping point, in which, discussing mental health has overcome countless cultural, gender, and age barriers due largely in part to raising awareness through social media. Today the sharing of one’s mental health condition often feels philanthropic in nature giving the person sharing and their journey through coping and living through managing their own challenges great meaning when used to help others.

Toby Allen’s Real Monsters series exemplifies the power of social to share one’s personal coping mechanism to help others while letting others know that are not alone.

Amwell provides online doctors available 24 hours a day allowing those in need of a healthcare professional the ability to skip the urgent care hassle and see a doctor from their bed on their computer or on-the-go from their tablet or phone.

There are licensed Dieticians, Behavioral Health Therapists, as well as Physicians. Amwell accepts insurance and has made their user experience seamless.

Their marketing strategy was harnessing the power of Moms through leveraging influencers and sponsoring their advertisement of Amwell and it’s services.

Why It’s Hot:

Amwell recognized the power of leveraging mom influencers and made an investment in them by creating a dedicated hashtag and having mom’s share across their blogs and twitter accounts.

Some of the top line lessons for marketers from Disney are centered on the way people are treated and how the experience is curated. There is an important place for curated experiences in pharmaceutical marketing and we can learn a few lessons from Disney.

Attention to detail

On every ride there are access corridors, stairs, and pathways for the crews to clean and maintain them. These utilitarian areas are still branded with the ride’s theme right down to the railings and door designs. They probably change to unadorned stairwells and metal doors inside the attraction and away from guests’ eyes and experience but as far as the customer experience is concerned the ride’s theme carries on forever.

Relevance

For a company with many brands and a consolidated call center make sure that there are scripts and protocols available for each patient and brand. For brands with multiple indications look closely at how patients are treated at the front door. The best experience is one where each condition has its own site. Next best is one where the user’s choice is remembered so that they see the most relevant information on subsequent visits. Remember, even if you have an 85% “first visit” rate, those 15% of return visitors are probably mostly made up of your patients.

You’re never rushed

Disney has technology to optimize the guest’s experience, but lines can still be long. When my daughter waited in line to see her favourite characters there was a line a mile long behind us. When talking with the characters she wasn’t rushed or snubbed, the experience was fulfilling and worth the wait.

Relevance

Your patients have often been through a long journey to get to their script, take the time to really curate an experience for them and make them feel valued. This can be an extra couple of minutes on a phone call, a call center script that offers more options, a more complete digital experience, or even a retargeting campaign centered on services for patients rather than just selling the brand.

Technology set to “help”

The FastPass system at Disney is absolutely genius. For those who haven’t visited recently, the FastPass system is available to all park visitors and essentially ensures that every guest will have a great experience on at least three rides. They limit the number of FastPass guests for rides in one-hour periods so that they can manage the lines. This provides a better experience for guests who aren’t standing in line all day and frees up their time to buy food and Disney merchandise.

Relevance

What could your patients do with extra time? There are often ways to curate their experience to assist with the journey. Can specialists be found nearby? When filling a script are there nearby pharmacies or even specialty mail-order pharmacies available?

For your writing physicians, are there ways you can make their lives easier? Most rare disease claims require prior authorization forms, are there ways that your information can be organized to help them? Even better, is your payer marketing program set up to make their lives as easy as possible?

Why It’s Hot: The Disney experience is something that is not replicated in other theme parks but which pays dividends in terms of revenue per guest and repeat visits. Look to your own customer experiences and ask the question: what would Disney do?

Beacon technology has been a favorite among Digital Marketers for their unique ability to offer ultra-geolocalization with a high level of personalization. Reports state, Facebook has already completed testing a new functionality for its Places feature called, “Place Tips“, using beacon technology.

More particularly, a small group of retailers in New York have already tested and approved a new feature called Place Tips, which will show pictures and tips about specific locales when visitors open their Facebook app. In fact, visitors and app users will see a welcome note and photo along with prompts to like the business’ Facebook Page and check in, combined with posts from the respective Facebook Page and their friends’ recommendations about the business.

Right now, business all over the United States can request free beacons for their stores. Businesses that have already received their beacon can visit fb.me/place-setup to customize their visitors’ experience and learn more about this new feature.

Why It’s HOT: Facebook has seamlessly integrated their platform in an online and offline capacity in the real world. Utilizing beacon technology, Facebook will drive engagement and new customer experiences that have yet to be realized in this capacity.

Tumblr‘s new GIF search feature is making it easier than ever for users to insert the perfect GIF into a blog post. This new feature should make marketers re-think the way they create shareable GIF content on the platform.

When writing a post, you can press the “+” button, and a line of buttons will show up — now including a GIF one. You can then search for anything you want to insert, such as emotions, comments, characters. When you find one, press the button and voilà.

Tumblr will then notify the original poster of the GIF that their image has been used in a post via the dashboard and app notifications; however, they missed the ball here in some regards. For example, the Instagram Re-post app feature that tags the original poster in the re-post gives “credit” to the original poster increasing reach and driving awareness.

Why It’s Hot:

By investing in this new feature, Tumblr has simplified the process to find the perfect GIF, a major currency on the platform. Even hotter is the GIF search feature aggregates results from GIFs shared by users on the platform. Therefore, users are scrolling Tumblr user GIFs to embed in their posts, essentially promoting the exponential sharing of content on the platform.

A seamless user experience on social platforms is critical. Amazing content on those platforms built around that user experience is critical for marketers. On Facebook we create content to be “Thumb-Stopping” – causing a user thumb-scrolling their Newsfeed on a mobile device to stop scrolling and engage with that content. On Instagram, we share content that is “Double-Tap Worthy” – slowing down the users’ thumb-scrolling activity just enough to double-tap content to “Like” it. On Tumblr, marketers will need to figure out how to build GIF content that is “Scroll-Stopping,” driving exponential sharing of their GIF content.

Poh, a wonderfully loved dog, was diagnosed with a terminal illness. So his owner, Neil Rodriguez, and Poh took to Instagram and hit the road from NY to California for the trip of a lifetime.

This one trip ended up turning into a 46-day tour around the U.S., where they visited over 35 cities.

“My life is kind of hectic,” Rodriguez said. “I’m always traveling, but Poh is my home, my child. I think this resonated with a lot of dog owners. They wish they could do stuff like this with their dog and spend these moments, but sometimes life gets in the way.”

“I am super blessed that I have actually gotten to do this,” he added. “People think I take care of Poh, but Poh takes care of me.”

Why It’s Hot: Sometimes we let life get in the way. Poh’s adventures have taught humans through his Instagram account that life is for living. Through his social media presence, Poh’s story was picked up by news media and he has now gone viral across the web and traditional media. Poh has his own dedicated hashtag and almost almost 37K followers on Instagram. Poh is a dog, a dog with a story that connected with 37 thousands humans on an emotional level that formed authentic connections. Join the other 37K fans of Poh and follow Poh the Dog’s Big Adventure on Instagram.

ThePeruvian League Against Cancer has built a special tower on the Playa Agua Dulce, which offers wireless internet connectivity—but only to people standing in the tower’s shadow.

On top of the structure, a directional antenna attached to a sensor limits the scope of the signal and rotates with the sun. The login page for the network, which supports some 250 users at a time, includes prevention information about skin cancer.

When users log on to the network, they also provide the cancer association valuable analytics on how much time they’re spending in the shade. Skin cancer from UV light exposure affects more than three million people each year. Although sunscreen provides some protection, seeking shadow is an often overlooked and easy solution to reducing skin cancer risks.

Cancer foundations around the world are excited by the potential of this system. Shadow Wi-Fi’s developer, Happiness, has released access to the software for non-profit use. Cancer foundations around the world can set up the system, without ICT knowledge.

According to Adolfo Dammert Ludowieg, president of Liga Contra el Cáncer, “[Shadow Wi-Fi] has changed sun-worshipers’ behavior and educated them about the value of becoming shadow-worshipers at the most harmful hours of the day, between 12 and 4pm.”

Agency Happiness Brussels helped set up the rig and is planning similar installations in partnership with local organizations in San Francisco and New Zealand.

Why It’s HOT: This clever tower with great utility offers a service in high-demand and in exchange raises awareness while encouraging behavioral changes to minimize skin cancer risk.

The Philadelphia Museum of ArtInside Out fosters spontaneous interactions with art and adds to the beauty and vitality of local communities. Find a surprise at every turn, share on social media with dedicated hashtag, #ArtInsideOut, and come see the original artworks at your Philadelphia Museum of Art.

This summer and fall, sixty high-quality replicas of Museum masterpieces will find their way into communities around the region. Each participating neighborhood will feature about ten artworks within a short distance of each other. Walk through the park, hop on a bike, or meander down Main Street through each exciting outdoor exhibition.

Inside Out will be presented in two cycles.

Mid-May–August

To see what artwork is featured in each community, explore the maps below.

Residents fromzip codesparticipating this summer will receive free general admission to the Museum from Friday, July 17, through Sunday, July 19, 2015. To gain free entry to the Museum that weekend, go to any Visitor Services desk andpresent your driver’s license or an ID card that lists one of these zip codes.his

Why It’s HOT// It nails the very core of why guerrilla marketing is so effective. The campaign is completely unexpected, rooted in goodwill, and drives people to the museum with the offer of free admission. The dedicated hashtag and social component brings the entire campaign online even offering forms for registration for 2016.

Not in the mood for another emotional Mother’s Day ad? Watch Samsung’s #TextsFromMom ad for a good laugh. For an added twist, Samsung included visible phone numbers so you can call the mom’s and listen to their voicemails. Try one! 1-813-750-2964

Why It’s HOT: Samsung added a new twist with voicemails making their 2015 Mother’s Day ad rather disruptive.

Yesterday’s DataSift Facebook webinar revealed a huge breakthrough for healthcare marketers. Through their partnership, Facebook is providing aggregated topic data to marketers on DataSift’s API. This represents the first time we’ve been able to pull back the curtain and see what Facebook users are talking about in their private conversations.

Until this option, the only way to get insight into what was happening on Facebook was to engage in the channel. Even then, marketers only got insight what happened on and around their own pages so of course that was a very limited and self-selected audience.

INSIGHTS

Now, marketers will be able to get insight into volumes of conversation on Facebook by using three different criteria:

The campaign to “Change Direction” is a collection of the community leaders coming together to create a new story in America about mental health, mental illness, and wellness. #ChangeMentalHealth

America is at a crossroads when it comes to how our society addresses mental health. We know that one in five of our citizens has a diagnosable mental health condition, and that more Americans are expected to die this year by suicide than in car accidents. While many of us are comfortable acknowledging publicly our physical suffering, for which we almost always seek help, many more of us privately experience mental suffering, for which we almost never reach out.

Purpose

The Change Direction initiative is a collection of concerned citizens, nonprofit leaders, and leaders from the private sector who have come together to create a new story in America about mental health, mental illness, and wellness. This initiative was inspired by the discussion at the White House National Conference on Mental Health in 2013, which came on the heels of the Newtown, Conn. tragedy.

By bringing together this unprecedented and diverse group of leaders we plan to spark a movement that:

frees us to see our mental health as having equal value to our physical health

creates a common language that allows us to recognize the signs of emotional suffering in ourselves and others

encourages us to care for our mental well-being and the mental well-being of others

The Pledges

The simplest pledge is one that anyone can do. Learn the Five Signs of emotional suffering so you can recognize them in yourself or help a loved one who may be in emotional pain. In short, the Five Signs are personality change, agitation, withdrawal, decline in personal care, and hopelessness. Someone may exhibit one or more signs.

Moreover, a long and growing list of nonprofit organizations and private sector companies are making additional pledges to deliver educational tools and programs that will help change the national conversation about mental health. This collective impact effort will reach over 30 million Americans over the next five years with specific efforts focused to educate:

military personnel, veterans, and family members

corporate employees

federal, state, and local government employees

first responders

students, teachers, school officials, and coaches

members of the faith-based community

health care professionals

Why It’s Hot: Social Media is being leveraged as a catalyst to raise awareness and gain traction to bring about positive change and alleviate the weight of long-standing negative stigmas

Retailer Lord & Taylor blitzed into feeds by partnering with 50 influential fashionistas on Instagram and having each pose wearing the same dress.

The dress itself sold out by the end of the weekend, but luckily for the brand, it had a larger goal in mind: Debuting its Design Lab collection, focused on “fashion-forward finds.”

“The program was designed to introduce Design Lab to this customer where she is engaging and consuming content every day,” said Lord & Taylor CMO Michael Crotty. “The goal was to make her stop in her feed and ask why all her favorite bloggers are wearing this dress and what is Design Lab? Using Instagram as that vehicle is a logical choice, especially when it comes to fashion.”

Why It’s HOT: 2015 is proving to be the year of the “Influencer impact”.

An even 50 Instagrammers were hand-picked and compensated by the brand, with each selected “based on her aesthetic and reach,” Crotty said. Many of the posts generated more than 1,000 Likes each, with several surpassing 5,000 Likes and some reaching rarified levelslike 13,000 Likes.

President Obama and The First Lady have taken to social media like no other Presidential pair in history. After a tumultuous start with widely publicized website issues, President Obama and his social media team launched #GetCovered to turn the tide on registration for the Affordable Care Act. While The First Lady was hard at work on the 5th anniversary of Let’s Move! The First Lady is encouraging Americans across the country to give out high-fives when they see someone making healthy choices. And she’s challenging everyone to #GimmeFivethings they are doing to eat better, be more active, and lead a healthier life. Both the President and the First Lady have definitely increased their Klout scores.

#GetCovered

In order to effectively reach the target demographic of millennials, this integrated campaign was active across multiple channels, including many platforms previously untouched by brands. The #GetCovered campaign aimed to reach millennials in a way that was organic and digestible. President Obama also ventured into new territory by becoming the first verified user on Quora, a question and answer based social community, where he held an online forum discussing the Affordable Care Act. Arguably the most successful (and hilarious) component of #GetCovered was the president’s appearance on the online talk show Between Two Ferns with comedian Zach Galifinakis, which has received over 8 million views, trended nationally and even won a Creative Arts Emmy Award.

YouTube has more than 1 billion users and 75% of users will visit your website after watching one of your videos on YouTube. There is no question whether your business should have its own YouTube channel, it certainly does!

Video will be huge in 2015 and is projected to continue to grow for the years to come. Facebook is betting a lot on it, YouTube is fighting hard to remain the number 1 and many other smaller social video platforms have learned video integration is pinnacle.

These are important key points to note to improve your video rankings and the visibility.

Keywords matter. Always add keywords to your video

Longer is Better for YouTube. Long video descriptions are better descriptions

Calls to Action Drive Value. Be sure to include CTAs in every video

Cross-platform Sharing is Pinnacle. Share your video on other platforms, but choose the right ones (Google+ and LinkedIn for example)

The numbers don’t lie: Your website is 50 times more likely to appear on the first page of Google Search if it includes a YouTube video.

Why It’s HOT:

A strong multichannel social strategy provides lucrative opportunity for businesses and organizations to share content cross-platforms increasing reach, impressions and video rankings. Integrating platform specific keys to success in your social and digital strategy has the potential to exponentially increase your return on your investment in social media and drive an increase against your key performance indicator (KPI) benchmarks.

Here is an awesome infographic to know more about YouTube. Check it out.

“Pinterest is diving deeper into the advertising ocean, by shifting its focus into providing solutions for those who want to invest a hefty chunk of money for promotion. With personalisation being the holy grail of advertising and social media platforms fighting for better targeting tools, Pinterest could not let the competition drive by.

According to Ad Age, Eric Hadley, head of partner marketing, has revealed that Pinterest will start offering more precise targeting, apart from its broad interest targeting that covers 30 different categories. For instance, an advertiser will be able to define a specific sport -e.g. soccer- instead of sports in general, when creating an ad on Pinterest.

However, this was not the only revelation that emerged during the discussion. Hadley stated that Pinterest is also working on new ad formats and – more specifically – animated ads that move when users scroll. Although no further details were given, we should expect to have a more detailed announcement in the coming months.”

Why it’s HOT:Paid Social Media has become an integral part of the Digital Marketing Mix and social platforms are continuously refining ways in which marketers can reach their targeted demographics in unique new ways.

Diesel’s “The A-Z of Dance” Video has the Right Rhythm //

Lifestyle content rooted in creativity and culture continues to be a main focal point for brand marketers. It all about mastering the emotional connection with consumers and sparking the meaningful engagement that follows. Diesel seems to have had success only one year after a similar execution by PUMA that fell flat on its face.Dieseljoined forces withi-D Fashion Magazineto create a video in April 2014, “TheA-Z of Dance,” featuring Diesel’s #joggjeans. The video features the top talent making waves in pop culture today. Then Diesel makes it your turn to be The Star of their Next Video.

Now slip into your Jogg Jeans and show us your moves…We are now inviting fans across the globe to dance their way into a one-of-a-kind follow up film – upload your moves to Instagram, Vine etc using the hashtags #joggjeans and #iDdance.

Diesel drives fans to their Jogg Jeans site where they connect the video, the CTA and all social engagement with the hashtag, #joggjeans seamlessly in one place sealing the deal by featuring fans.

While the Diesel video has recently resurfaced thanks to Fast Company, it is difficult to forget that PUMA released the PUMA Dance Dictionary a year earlier in 2013. The concept was “Encrypt your messages into dance moves.” The video was created to celebrate the launch of the new PUMA “Sync” fragrances, the PUMA Dance Dictionary is a digital application that encrypts messages into dance moves. Don’t say it, move it. However, the effort was an epic failure and their site, pumadancedictionary.com, has become nothing more than inoperable code.Why It’s HOT: This shows that hitting the mark by understanding the social media landscape and understanding your audience in a manner that allows a team to create something that not only resonates but generates authentic engagement is a skill set only the few can master.

CHECK OUT THE VIDEOS BELOW:

Diesel’s “The A-Z of Dance” // WARNING: Video Contains Twerking. Content Potentially Not Suitable for Children Under Age 13.

PUMA’s Dance Dictionary // WARNING: You will never get the next 2 minutes and 44 seconds of your life back after watching the video below in its entirety.

The Puma Dance Dictionary, created by Grey London to push the brand’s new Sync fragrances (yes, Puma makes fragrances), allows users to select words and phrases which are then translated into dance moves by freestyle performers. These “moving” messages can be shared via social media or emailed to friends. You start with various templates and then shift a few words in and out to create sentences. The pre-set “I love women with heart,” for example, can be changed to “I love women with popcorn.” Or “I love guys with muscles.” Or even “I love women with nuts,” if you’re into that. Manipulating other templates yields sentiments like “Money makes me want to get naked,” “Hey bro, your face is crazy” and “Will you stroke my girlfriend?” This can be amusing, but not very, as the vocabulary is too limited. I understand the dancers could interpret only so many words, and Puma naturally wants to avoid potential hate speech or outright vulgarity. But the enterprise seems hamstrung by a lack of true interaction.

Ouch. Sorry, PUMA.You were just out of “Sync” on this one. Better luck next time.

There is a “seismic shift” to NNP (non-personal promotion), or non-rep delivered product promotion, taking place in the pharmaceutical industry. Specialties such as psychiatry, pediatrics, and gastroenterology have been significantly impacted. The result is marketing budgets are being reapportioned to social, mobile/apps, and digital marketing.

MM&M reports: Pharma is not in the business of fixing things that ain’t broke. It takes a seismic shift to force the industry to rethink its historical organizational structures and to replot its tried-and-tested road maps for commercial success. And that’s exactly what this represents.

HCPs are now blocking sales-rep access in swathes—some voluntarily, others under orders from above. According to ZS Associates’ AccessMonitor survey, only 51% of all prescribers are now accessible to reps, down from 78% in 2009. For some specialties, such as psychiatry (41%), pediatrics (45%) and gastroenterology (47%), the numbers are even worse.

An emerging key contributor to this trend is the fact that unprecedented numbers of prescribers are now employed by medical groups, many of which implement no-see policies on behalf of their employees. “It used to be that most physicians were independent businesspeople who always fought for what was best for the patient,” says Rich Daly, managing partner, RavineRock Partners, and former president, US diabetes, AstraZeneca. “But the power of the employer, the payer, the PBMs—they have changed the dynamic and others are now calling the shots.”

Whereas NPP’s role was once to complement field sales efforts—and perhaps pinch-hit for reps in the twilight innings of certain brands—it has since taken on a far greater significance as a tool kit for filling sales force gaps. But now that those gaps have become gaping holes, might we be approaching a watershed moment where an NPP strategy might actually supersede the sales force?

With respect to balancing the mix of calls and NPP, Daly, who has also held senior executive roles at Bristol-Myers Squibb and Takeda, believes pharma companies could be making better use of the data they collect. “We’ve had big data in pharmaceuticals for decades. We’re drowning in it,” he says. “But what about the big insights? If you have great analytics and derivative insight then you know whether a drug is likely to be concentrated at launch or if the uptake will likely be slow, and plan accordingly. Nobody ever gets fired in pharma for doing what everybody else has always done.”

That said, there is evidence that marketing budgets are being reapportioned. The annual MM&M/Ogilvy CommonHealth Healthcare Marketers Trend Report (MM&M, June 2014) showed signs of a shift in HCP spending toward NPP tactics last year: 63% of marketers reported increased budgets for mobile/tablet apps; 63% reported increased budgets for social media; 51% for digital ads; 48% for websites; and 33% for direct marketing.

“It’s hard to say if it’s a left-pocket-to-right-pocket move,” says Woodland. “But yes, marketing is freeing up dollars from the sales force and redeploying it on NPP.”

“There are more than enough viable addressable opportunities in every channel today,” says Woodland. “If you put in the effort to understand the audience, you get a much more coherent NPP strategy that won’t be a one-dimensional type of program.”

It’s all about choosing the most appropriate mix for the product, audience and market. “I have two children. I love them equally and I treat them equally,” says Daly. “But I don’t treat my products equally. I discriminate brutally. If it makes sense to approach product A with 75% NPP, then go for it. The biggest mistake anybody can make is to treat each product the same.”

Why It’s Hot: Social, Digital, Mobile/Apps are coming to the forefront in Pharma. It will mostly likely force the FDA to tighten up fuzzy interactive media guidelines in turn providing pharmaceutical companies fruitful opportunities particularly in the social space to engage direct to consumer as well as HCP.

Instagram wants to make sure you see and watch all the videos in your feed. The Facebook-owned video and photo-sharing application now auto-loops videos that appear in users’ feeds.

Instagram updated its app on February 3, 2015 to include the continually-replaying video feature, and it is strikingly similar to the way videos play on the Twitter-owned Vine app. According to VentureBeat, the app’s mobile users won’t be able to pause video playback, as they can on Vine. Instead, they must scroll past the video entirely. Instagram noted the auto-looping videos won’t eat up extra data for users on mobile devices.

However, Instagram’s mobile users can still choose to mute the clip’s sound, which automatically plays as the clip does. And users who view Instagram videos via the web will be able to pause those clips as they would a normal YouTube or Vine video.

Why It’s Hot: While Instagram is still arguably more well-known for its photo sharing abilities, marketers should be happy to see the auto-looping videos. Instagram started running video ads in late 2014, bringing brands like Disney, CW, and Activision on board. The auto-loop feature means Instagram users won’t be able to miss these and other marketers’ video ads.

The FDA approved a new share platform for a diabetes continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) system making it the first on the market to be able to wirelessly transmit (via Bluetooth LE) glucose readings directly to an iPhone.

“The FDA approved a new version of the Dexcom Share platform, which will make the Dexcom G4 continuous glucose monitor (CGM) the first on the market to be able to wirelessly transmit glucose readings directly to an iPhone.”

A wearable device sensor (worn on the body) will transmit CGM through the Dexcom receiver to the Dexcom iPhone app. The iPhone app will then transmit the data through the cloud to share it with up to 5 user-approved followers of the Dexcom Follower app such as caregivers, certified diabetes educators, and spouses.

The push to partner component with third party app and device manufacturers is HUGE . This system is the first time there will be official, live continuous glucose information available on the iPhone and in the Cloud.

Dexcom-approved partner iPhone apps such as Meal Memory and Apple Healthkit would be able to pull live glucose data on demand, without requiring user input.

Secondly, during the FDA approval process, the apps themselves were down-classified to a Class II device exempt from pre-market clearances. Therefore, future “Follower” apps from Dexcom and other companies will not require separate pre-market approval from the FDA, as long as they do not claim to be the primary readout of the data.

Why it’s HOT: The FDA has made a landmark move forward with this “Dexcom Share” platform approval. This approval included Bluetooth-enabled transmission of health data via wearable device sensors to an iPhone app putting health data in the cloud in conjunction with third party apps down-classification by the FDA is making 2015 quite an exciting year for Healthcare Technology Innovation.

Tumblr announced it’s new program today called Creatrs. Tumblr describes it as a art-meets-content collective essentially powering users by allowing them to utilize the Tumblr platform users to create advertising content for brands [to advertise on Tumblr].

[A wolf in sheep’s clothing] The Creatrs Network is a Tumblr advertising platform conversion driver for Tumblr by Tumblr.

Brands using the Creatrs Network are required to buy Tumblr advertisement. Traditionally, a brand will come in with content prepared by its own digital agency and simply buy the placement for its own copy. Tumblr is effectively offering the content itself to buy, and to use in expansive campaigns, as long as you buy a Tumblr ad spot first. In other words, brands can’t buy content from Tumblr’s Creatrs Network without also purchasing Tumblr native advertising spots.

Tumblr says that it already has 300 artists on the Tumblr Creatrs Network, and handles all the communication and exchange between brands and artists, from legal to payment to credit.

David Hayes, Head of Creative Strategy at Tumblr, says a quarter of a million dollars have been paid to Tumblr’s select artists over the past year while it has tested Creatrs and Creatr Networks.He did not mention the amount of native platform ad revenue generated through Creatrs and Creatrs Network.

The Creatrs Networks’ goal [according to Tumblr] is to ensure advertisers have the best native advertising experience possible on the network by tapping its power users to design messages instead of an agency’s traditional creative department. Now that is deep and may fall in the category, “Things I later regretted saying during a media interview.”

Why It’s More Saucy Than Hot: Social platforms are proving they want to up the ante in terms of value proposition in turn further solidifying their already critical role in the digital marketing mix; however, it is rather bold to claim your platform can “empower” users to create advertising AND an experience that can be equated to that of an agency.Essentially this is a conversion tactic to secure an increase in native platform advertisements.I do not foresee a long term successful run for this initiative. Although, I believe this is only the beginning of a trend that consists of social platforms going full speed ahead to engage in efforts to compete outside of their comfort zone It’s going to be exciting to see where these platforms go in 2015.

Ba-bye Bing. Facebook quietly removed Microsoft-owned search tool, Bing, earlier in the week. This recent move was in preparation for Facebook launching their own search tool.

Facebook was using Bing to produce search results as its in-house search engine, allowing Facebook users to look for more information about their friends. Selecting Bing as a partner was also a way for Facebook to keep rival Google’s search engine away from the social network.Earlier this week, Facebook updated it’s method of search for old Facebook posts. The social network also revamped it’s “trending” section, making it easier for users to find news, and read different perspectives on the day’s most popular stories. Even bigger, is Facebook added a Twitter-like feed that includes @ mentions.

During a conference call in July, company CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that search is one of Facebook’s main focuses to fuel growth, noting that 1 billion search requests are entered into the site each day.

“There is more than a trillion posts, which some of the search engineers on the team like to remind me, is bigger than any web search corpus out there,” Zuckerberg said.

Why It’s Hot:Facebook continues to show that they are more than just a social platform. They are integrating themselves into the full digital marketing mix, including Atlas, their ad serving and tracking tool that follows users across screens into mobile.